Just to clarify, when you say EA-aligned here, do you mean roles within the EA ecosystem itself, the types of roles posted on the 80k job board, or more broadly any role where someone could plausibly have high impact on an EA-relevant cause area?
In farmed animal welfare, for example, there are many neglected, high-impact roles across government, media, environmental organizations, industry, and other spaces that I believe EAs are not applying to. This might be because of limited visibility, unclear signaling about whether these roles “count” as EA-aligned, lower perceived prestige or social validation within the community, and a tendency to default to more familiar, well-mapped pathways rather than exploring messier or less clearly defined options that require more independent judgment.
This makes me wonder whether part of the perceived talent bottleneck is less about a lack of opportunities overall, and more about how EA-aligned career paths are defined, signaled, and encouraged. If many impact-relevant roles sit outside EA organizations but are not widely recognized or supported as legitimate EA pathways, that could help explain why motivated candidates feel stuck even while important positions remain unfilled.
That said, if someone is indeed applying to roles where they could make an impact in a relevant cause area, outside of the EA ecosystem, and still not having luck over an extended period, that’s where I start to question interview skills, application quality, references, and other factors. While there is a lot of career support available in the EA space, I’m not sure we offer enough sustained 1:1 career coaching.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. When I refer to EA-aligned here—I am mostly referring to jobs posted on the EA Job Board, 80k Hours Job Board and the Probably Good job board.
I agree it’s possible that part of the issue is how EA-aligned career paths are defined, signaled, and encouraged. That said, I’d be genuinely interested to see concrete examples of high-impact roles that are both neglected and currently unfilled, particularly in areas like animal welfare. My understanding is that the major EA job boards do not discriminate against animal welfare projects or roles outside explicitly EA-branded organizations, as long as the impact case is strong.
Where I’m more skeptical is the idea that lack of success for many candidates is primarily driven by individual shortcomings (e.g. qualifications, interview skills, or application quality). What I’ve observed instead looks like a fairly classic supply-and-demand imbalance: a large pool of highly motivated, qualified applicants competing for a very small number of roles. Positions on the 80,000 Hours job board routinely receive hundreds or thousands of applications for a single opening, which mirrors broader trends in the general job market.
Given that dynamic, it seems likely that many capable candidates will fail to land roles simply due to competition and limited hiring capacity, rather than because they are not a good fit in absolute terms. That’s why I’m interested in whether ecosystem-level interventions—beyond individual career advice—could help better absorb and deploy this surplus of motivated talent.
Just to clarify, when you say EA-aligned here, do you mean roles within the EA ecosystem itself, the types of roles posted on the 80k job board, or more broadly any role where someone could plausibly have high impact on an EA-relevant cause area?
In farmed animal welfare, for example, there are many neglected, high-impact roles across government, media, environmental organizations, industry, and other spaces that I believe EAs are not applying to. This might be because of limited visibility, unclear signaling about whether these roles “count” as EA-aligned, lower perceived prestige or social validation within the community, and a tendency to default to more familiar, well-mapped pathways rather than exploring messier or less clearly defined options that require more independent judgment.
This makes me wonder whether part of the perceived talent bottleneck is less about a lack of opportunities overall, and more about how EA-aligned career paths are defined, signaled, and encouraged. If many impact-relevant roles sit outside EA organizations but are not widely recognized or supported as legitimate EA pathways, that could help explain why motivated candidates feel stuck even while important positions remain unfilled.
That said, if someone is indeed applying to roles where they could make an impact in a relevant cause area, outside of the EA ecosystem, and still not having luck over an extended period, that’s where I start to question interview skills, application quality, references, and other factors. While there is a lot of career support available in the EA space, I’m not sure we offer enough sustained 1:1 career coaching.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. When I refer to EA-aligned here—I am mostly referring to jobs posted on the EA Job Board, 80k Hours Job Board and the Probably Good job board.
I agree it’s possible that part of the issue is how EA-aligned career paths are defined, signaled, and encouraged. That said, I’d be genuinely interested to see concrete examples of high-impact roles that are both neglected and currently unfilled, particularly in areas like animal welfare. My understanding is that the major EA job boards do not discriminate against animal welfare projects or roles outside explicitly EA-branded organizations, as long as the impact case is strong.
Where I’m more skeptical is the idea that lack of success for many candidates is primarily driven by individual shortcomings (e.g. qualifications, interview skills, or application quality). What I’ve observed instead looks like a fairly classic supply-and-demand imbalance: a large pool of highly motivated, qualified applicants competing for a very small number of roles. Positions on the 80,000 Hours job board routinely receive hundreds or thousands of applications for a single opening, which mirrors broader trends in the general job market.
Given that dynamic, it seems likely that many capable candidates will fail to land roles simply due to competition and limited hiring capacity, rather than because they are not a good fit in absolute terms. That’s why I’m interested in whether ecosystem-level interventions—beyond individual career advice—could help better absorb and deploy this surplus of motivated talent.